Frenetic fireflies glinted behind her eyes that summer. I didn't know what had changed her, but she swung her arms freely, wore loose hemp bracelets with colored beads, drew wild birds with marker in the crooks of her elbows: I never knew till then she was ambidextrous. Electricity crackled and sparked between us like lightning kissing telephone wires in a midsummer storm. I kept hoping her straw-colored hair was wild and dry enough to light a fire in, but all summer long we smiled and laughed and smiled; she thirsted too much to drive her closed eyelids into the rain, so I indulged it all, glad, at least, for her presence.

Once, at school, I snuck up behind her during lunchtime as she stared intently into her white computer screen at an empty table beside the wall. As I reached out to poke her in the ribs my eyes glanced across text and the blinking cursor: Pond water festers in my veins and my heart has stopped trying to turn it into blood. I have been trying to forget myself before anyone else remembers me. I backtracked, stepped quietly away, but sometimes when she looks me in the eyes and asks me where the thunder's gone I wonder whether she heard me breathing behind her, then.

She vowed, one spring night under the stars, after hours clinging so hard to a boy's stomach as his motorbike screamed down a deserted Minnesota highway that the imprint of her clenched fists took three days to fade from his skin, to exist. This I learned after her death, after that summer, when the boy came up to the funeral podium holding a battered piece of paper that held only aimless sketches of her eyes and crumpled against it. After he left her, the only way she knew how to hold onto him was by expanding in her promise to live, and so she did wildly, desperately, swallowing soil and sunshine into her open throat to grow wildflowers out of each of her orifices. After that summer was over, they told her she had to let go. So she let autumn dry the auburn leaves and pressed her wildflowers between the pages of her journal, and as one by one the foliage fell, she let go.

When you’re tenand your father’sfriends grinand tell you how nicelyyou’re developing, you learn to keep playingand say thank youbecause you’re stilltoo young to understandjust what they mean by that. When you’re thirteenand your mother’slover buys you a new dress because“it’ll look sexy on you”,you learn to wear it no matter how much youhate itand say thank you because you don’t wantto cause another argument.When you’re sixteenand that guy on the football teamspikes your drink at a partyand muffles your screams withhis fist as he slams himself into youyou learn to keep your mouthshutand say thank youbecause you know nobodyis going to believe youif you tell thetruth.When you’re twentyand your mind gets the best of youtelling you it was all your fault, you deserved it,nobody will ever want you now, you learn todrinksnortcutand say thank youbecause you know thatfor the first timethe power is in yourhands.

Rusty metal bridge and an angry running stream show life beginning to thawThe cold bitterness is breaking to saturate the pores of the land and give way to a movement seemingly going forward …. All the while a single ponderIn which the search for influence , a mental stimulant , a convincing factor stating that it is okay to be here and to move forward as well.

A nightmare -slash and burn and public executionsthe colosseum walls brokenspilling a thirsty floodonto satellites the berserker roars of encore encore!the fat lady singingbut no one hearsno one hearswith ear drums burst -Let me wake nowI want to be awakened by song